We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Tim Sandefur has done what looks like an excellent piece of historical detective work. He writes about some of the images that are sometimes brought up by those who want to claim that there was no real proof of any serious communist threat to the US and that Joe McCarthy was a deluded fool, etc, etc. The entry is quite a long one so it is worth reading over a coffee break. Here is how it kicks off:
“You’ve probably seen this amusing poster somewhere or other; a bookstore near my house has it displayed on the wall. It’s often cited as an example of Cold War hysteria—the evils of McCarthyism—how foolish our grandparents were, that they would believe such silliness! They must have been really backwards.”
We then are shown the supposedly sinister poster and told how it might have been created, and where from.
This period of US history fascinates me. When I was studying history at school and university, the standard line on the 1930s and subsequent decade and a half in the US was that a lot of the fears about the “Reds” were massively overblown, misused for various purposes, etc. And yet it turns out that even Joe McCarthy might have had a case, as our own Brian Micklethwait wrote some time ago.
It remains a notable fact of US politics that “socialist” is a pretty dire term of abuse. Even those who are, in my view, socialists – such as Barack Obama – seem to want to deny it.
A lot of people like the way Obama has governed less than they liked the idea of Obama governing.
– Michael Barone
If Obama loses – if – I think that will sum it all up very well. And if Obama does lose, we must all hope that Romney governing turns out better than the idea of Romney governing looks now.
I have been following the Brett Kimberlin case, much linked to of late by Instapundit, with interest, but with some confusion.
It is not that I consider exercises like Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day to be pointless. It is that I remain genuinely confused about what that point might be. Who, exactly, are we all trying to convince, and of what, exactly?
I get the impression that all those blogging about this do know their answers to this question, but to them, it’s obvious, and if they ever did spell it out, that was many days ago. So, what are those answers?
Kimberlin is a bad, bad man, who has a history of villainy generally, and in particular of trying to intimidate bloggers who point this fact out. So yes, the cost in potential intimidation from Brett Kimberlin of lots of us blogging about Brett Kimberlin is small, and all the smaller for lots and lots of us doing this, especially from a nice safe distance like from London. But what exactly does me mentioning the name of Brett Kimberlin, on the blog that I write for, accomplish?
Does it intimidate Brett Kimberlin himself, and thereby stop him intimidating any more bloggers and from intimidating any more the bloggers he is intimidating now? How? Isn’t Kimberlin rather pleased to have got up the noses of so many bloggers whom he already detests and despises, and turned into a minor internet celebrity like this?
Does it persuade the forces of law and order to stomp all over Kimberlin, more than they have been doing lately? Again, how?
Is the idea to show to mainstream Americans that the mainstream media are rubbish, for not mentioning this story? If so, what exactly is the plan for reaching mainstream America with this proposition?
Leading directly on from the previous question, is the idea to embarrass the mainstream media into mentioning the story? Their current opinion of all this is, presumably, that a lot of stupid right wing blogs are making a gigantic fuss about a small-time crook, who has gone some way towards rejoining polite society by making himself useful to the left-wing cause, which just goes to show that Kimberlin is doing something good, having annoyed all the right right wing nutters. And given that not even that opinion will find its way into the mainstream media any time soon, nothing much would seem to be being accomplished on that front either.
The pieces I have been reading during the last week or so have entirely convinced me that Brett Kimberlin is a bad man, and that those who support him with money, or who did once upon a time, are at best very stupid, and probably not at all stupid but very, very bad also, arguably even worse than Kimberlin himself, in particular Barbra Streisand and Brett Kimberlin’s evil and/or stupid aunt. My opinion of George Soros, to mention another Kimberliner, has gone done (even further). I had not realised until now quite what a brazen villain he is. But convincing someone like me of things as simple as these hardly amounts to much by way of an objective. I have no objection in principle to preaching to the choir. This can often be a very valuable exercise. I am positively asking for exactly such preaching now. But what valuable lesson might this particular chorister be learning from the Kimberlin affair, that I might otherwise have neglected? Or is it that all this just makes me … think about things?
Is it a case of all of the above? The matter is easily blogged about, fun to blog about, and will achieve a wide variety of relatively small but desirable things.
My questions are genuine, rather than sneeringly rhetorical. If I truly thought that Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day was pointless, I would not have mentioned it here at all. But, please somebody tell me why it is not pointless, and not perhaps even counter-productive on account of being so over-the-top for what it is actually accomplishing.
I am sure that our commentariat will have useful answers to offer me, and I look forward to reading them.
An article about how Washington DC and the surrounding area is booming on the back of government spending is creating a bit of a buzz. Grizzled veterans of lobby groups and the dynamics of how spending decisions are made will not be remotely surprised, of course. Even so, this is the sort of article that sums up so much that is bent out of shape of Western societies and their bloated public sectors. And it also highlights how, in such an economy, so many of those who call themselves “contractors” and “consultants” are in fact dependent to a significant degree on the taxpayer for funds, not on anything resembling laissez faire capitalism. (There are similarities with London and Brussels, of course, though in the case of London, it is not just the centre of political power, but of financial and other sorts of power too, such as in the arts and entertainment business).
And this quote is chilling, if it highlights where young people think the action is:
“Aside from its wealth, the single defining feature of über-Washington is its youth. Most of the people who have moved to Washington since 2006 have been under 35; the region has the highest percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds in the U.S. “We’re a mecca for young people,” Fuller says. One recent arrival says word has gotten out to new graduates that Washington is where the work is. “It’s a place where a liberal-arts major can still get a job,” she says, “because you don’t need a particular skill.””
Marvellous, as Clint Eastwood says in his movies.
Not being wise in the ways of Twitter, I am not sure where Mr Eugenides got this piece of simple but effective graphics, only that he either acquired it or created it, one way or another, and that I found out about it because it was one of David Thompson’s clutch of ephemera last Friday:
I recall reading in one of Professor Parkinson’s books, I think in his classic Parkinson’s Law, that people only find it easy to have strong opinions about sums of money, or circumstances generally, that are within their particular and usually rather limited range of experience. So it is that a local planning committee will spend an hour arguing about a cheap loft extension, while nodding through an entire hundred million quid power station without discussion. Something along those lines. True, I suspect. Certainly true of many people.
So, the thing to do, with these otherwise unimaginably huge sums of money that politicians are slinging around nowadays, to keep all their various financial plates on sticks spinning fast enough, is what is done here, in the above graphic. Divide them all by the same (very large) number, until the original numbers become regular numbers of the sort regular people can relate to, while the numbers all nevertheless retain their relative sizes, to each other. The essential nature of what is going on is thus laid bare, for people who might otherwise be blinded by all the zeros, and all those bewildering words ending in “-illion”.
I agree with Mr Eugenides. This is clever.
And no, he didn’t invent it. It’s been around for a while.
…the state is not your friend.
Ira Stoll over on Reason.com has an excellent article drawing the obvious parallel between the Nazi era Reichsfluchsteuer tax imposed on fleeing Jews and the ‘exit taxes’ being imposed on US subjects seeking to leave the USA.
Read the whole thing.
I have a sense that, if what writers such as Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media say is correct, that it will become more politically palatable for parts of the mainstream media to address the sensitive issue as to whether Mr Obama actually is, by the usual tests required of a POTUS, American.
“So now Chris Matthews isn’t the only one experiencing a little thrill when he thinks about Barack (omit middle name) Obama. The recent revelation that from the early 1990s until the day before yesterday—or, to be more accurate, until Obama made his decision to run for president—a biographical pamphlet circulated by his literary agents described him as having been “born in Kenya” has been setting the world of Twitter atwitter. What should we think about that? An agency spokesman who claims to have been responsible for the “born in Kenya” wheeze has publicly said that it was a mistake, a typographical error, a slip of the pen that just went “unchecked” for, um, sixteen-seventeen years. I can understand that. She meant to write “Hawaii” and wrote “Kenya” instead. Could happen to anyone. They look and sound enough alike, don’t they, that no one noticed. You meant to write “there” and you wrote “their” instead. You meant to write “cup” and you wrote “floccinaucinihilipilification” instead. No one—no one at the literary agency, not the author himself—could be expected to notice. You understand that, right?”
The article then goes on to address to the extent to which various records about Obama (medical and college stuff,) have been sealed. And one commenter on the PJM site had this observation:
“The curious thing isn’t so much that these things are all sealed, but that the sealing is so effective. If this had been any Republican, or any ordinary Democrat, these things would all have been on Wikileaks years ago. The CIA can’t keep secrets this well. Not even the Mossad.”
But in the end, how much of this stuff about “Who is Barack Obama?” matters. He’s been in the job for four years. Although his period of office coincided with the very welcome disposal of Bin Laden, I cannot really think if a single serious positive accomplishment by Obama during his time in office, although I suppose his greatest might be his unintended one: the birth of the Tea Party movement, and an associated invigoration of the small government, libertarian strain within the Republican Party (well, even that might be debatable). Whatever doubts I might have about Mitt Romney, I just cannot go along with the idea of “to save the village we must destroy it” point of view, nor do I think we can finesse the situation if Obama wins, as argued by Tim Sandefur recently. (I don’t share Tim’s fear that we will see a dramatic loss of freedoms to the religious right, although I suppose anything is possible).
There has been a bit of a buzz in the internet and elsewhere about a new development off the US West Coast, known as Blueseed:
“More than 100 international tech companies have registered their interest in floating geek city Blueseed, to be launched next year in international waters outside of Silicon Valley. The visa-free, start-up-friendly concept launched late last year aims to create a fully commercial technology incubator where global entrepreneurs can live and work in close proximity to the Valley, accessing VC funding and talent as required. The bulk of registered demand germinated from the U.S. at 20.3%, Indian 10.5%, and Australians at 6%. Reasons: living and working in an “awesome” start-up- and technology-oriented space, proximity to Silicon Valley’s investors, and an alternative to having to get U.S. work visas for company founders or employees were key reasons. Cost:$1,200 to $3,000 per person per month.”
One of the bitter ironies of recent years has been how the US, a country that operates a worldwide system of taxes, as well as tightening its visa and other regulations, has made it not just harder for people, including the likes of software engineers, to enter the country, but also far less easy for expat Americans on short- or long-term trips abroad to do so and gain access to even basic financial services. (To view more on the latter point, see this entry of mine about the FATCA Act.) But as the Blueseed venture demonstrates, entrepreneurs and other liberty-loving people will try and find a way around the tentacles of Big Government. No doubt the Eyeores will say this is all futile, that the authorities will shut this sort of thing down, yadda-yadda, but the very fact that such ventures are being worked on at all is itself a kind of victory for certain ideas.
Reason magazine has a nice roundup on the Blueseed venture. And Patri Friedman’s Seasteading Institute is still going strong. Here is a great book on the subject, How To Start Your Own Country, covering the failed attempts and the mini-victories along the way.
At the moment I am a daily Instapundit reader, which is because at the moment I find American politics a whole lot more interesting than British politics. At least Obama is interesting! Cameron just makes me want to give up thinking about British politics altogether.
But the interesting American question for me is not who will win their next Presidential election. Personally – in defiance of our Dear Leader (although time may well prove to me the error of my ways), for all the grief it may bring, and for whatever miniscule difference it may make to anything – I support Anyone-But-Obama for President rather than the man himself. No, what interests me about America just now is to what extent the old mainstream media really are in the process of being dethroned.
This is what is so interesting about things like the Obama Eats Dogs story. In itself it is about nothing. Its only significance is that Obama’s cheerleaders want this story to stop, while Obama’s detractors want it to rock on. But that is exactly why it is so interesting. It is pure media. It’s like one of those enemas that doctors inflict upon you, to enable them to see what is happening inside you. It does nothing to you, other than make your insides trackable. Obama Eats Dogs stories tell you about the power of The Media either to suppress a story which they now don’t like, or maybe not to suppress it.
My take on the alleged bias of the American mainstream media is that they have been monstrously biased in a statist direction for well over a century. Every other Media story since the year dot has been about (a) a Problem; and (b), all intertwined with that, what the government is doing about the Problem or ought to be doing about the Problem. There is now a huge constituency of idiots who really do think that the answer to any problem of any sort is for the government to take charge of it, and screw it up some more.
What is now changing is not the bias. What is changing is that now, because of the rise of other media (barium enema media?), this bias is trackable.
Don’t kid yourself that an earlier generation of Old Gents In Suits Who Worshipped Facts were not almost as biased as their now visibly biased progeny. The point about bias is not – or not only – whether you lie. The point is what you say is a story in the first place.
Problem!!! Facts. What is the government doing about it?!? More facts. What does Everyone Important say about what the government ought to be doing about it?!? More facts. There’s no need to lie about anything to skew the way you present the world.
Imagine, on the other hand, a world in which The Media all assumed that problems were there to be solved by humans, and that the “politicians” are just another of those problems that we humans have to deal with from time to time. The “News” would be completely different.
And what interests me about America just now is that this kind of thing is all becoming so much more visible, to the point where it might even be changing, in a good direction.
Nice to see I am not the only Obama detractor who nevertheless wants Romney to crash and burn. Shikha Dalmia over at Reason writes 5 Reasons why conservatives should root for a Romney defeat:
The GOP is in a state of intellectual flux, illustrated perfectly by the ideological heterodoxy of its presidential field. Various strains representing different interests are fighting for the soul of the GOP: The neocons are duking it out with anti-war Paulistas. Social moderates are trying to wrest some space from pro-life religious conservatives. Deficits and debt worry everyone, but there is no consensus on entitlement reform. The GOP allegedly stands for the free market—but it has yet to figure out whether Bush’s financial bailout was right or wrong.
A visionless, rudderless, gaffe-prone presidency is the last thing that Republicans need right now. Having to defend Romney’s slips—he’s insulted 7-Eleven cookies, said he enjoys firing people, and announced he is not concerned about the very poor, and that’s just this year—will further contort the party’s soul. Four years of Romneyisms, all of which smack of elitism, will cement the image of the GOP as the out-of-touch party of the rich.
Better that the GOP remain in the political wilderness for another four years (and, hopefully, find itself) than have a Romney presidency prolong its intellectual and moral confusion.
That is more or less how I see it as well.
The Wisconsin Recall election on June 5 is national news and a much discussed political watershed moment. And, conveniently, voter ID laws have been temporarily blocked during the recall.
If this bastard wins the Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial primary, expect all hell to break loose.
His platform is available courtesy of Occupy Wisconsin.
I didn’t know about the Republican primary and thought that what everybody is calling “The Democratic Primary” didn’t have any Republican elections on the ballot. I hadn’t planned on voting.
That bastion of unbiased neutrality, aka Wisconsin Public Radio, even put up an article saying that “Gov. Walker is urging Republican voters not to meddle in the Democratic primary recall elections on May 8th” . Notice the NPR article has the exact same date that the Government Accountability Board (notice 5 to 1 Democratic appointees) announced that they had qualified an additional 369 petition signatures that they had previous determined to be ineligible and Kohl-Riggs would be running against Walker.
Their plan might even work. If it does, expect what we’ve seen so far to look like it was a warm-up.
Instapundit today links to this report, about how a blogger and diabetes sufferer called Steve Cooksey is being told by a North Carolina regulator that he is breaking the law by giving tips, based on his own experience, to others about how to deal with diabetes. Good for Instapundit.
This is the kind of spat which, if it gets a decent slice of publicity, can be won by the forces of free speech and freedom of expression. Hence this posting of mine in response to the Instapundit posting, which I offer as another straw on the bureaucratic camel’s back. It will surely not be the only such straw. I like to think that, if Steve Cooksey finds out about this posting here, the fact that it is happening Abroad may cheer him up that little bit more. “Hey, this damn regulator is making me world famous!”
It helps that they have a Constitution over there, which includes a bit about how you can say what you want, even if a mere state law says otherwise.
Is Steve Cooksey, who has no “license” to offer the advice he is offering, in fact giving bad dietary advice? If so, the correct response from those who think this is to say so, and to explain why they think this. Perhaps one of them could start another blog, saying things like: “Steve Cooksey is talking nonsense.” “Don’t do what Steve Cooksey says, and this is why you shouldn’t.” And so on.
That is, or ought to be, the American way. (It ought to be the way everywhere.)
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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